Sub Sahara Africa faces an on-going humanitarian crisis due to the HIV/AIDS endemic, malaria, and drought. In Africa, AIDS alone has taken more than 20 million lives and some 15 million children have been orphaned.

In "Urgent Action for Children on the Brink,” Carol Bellang, executive Director of Unicef, stated:

The silence that surrounds children affected by HIV/AIDS and the inaction that results is morally reprehensible and unacceptable. If this situation is not addressed and not addressed now with increased urgency, millions of children will continue to die, and tens of millions more will be further marginalized, stigmatized, malnourished, uneducated and psychologically damaged.

Zambia has been particularly hard hit. AIDS has left nearly one and a half million children without one or both parents; resulting in many households headed by children. Households without parents are especially vulnerable to swelling the growing number of street children. Once committed to the streets a child’s chance of ever escaping a life of desperation to become a productive member of society is slim.

Zambia is today one of the poorest and least developed nations on earth. About two-thirds of the population lives on less than one $US a day. Life expectancy at birth has fallen to 35 years of age.

The growing number of Zambian orphans by some estimates has surpassed a million. Some 130,000 are living in the streets of its capital, Lusaka, giving Zambia the highest per capita number of street children in the world.